The invention relates to a freight container, in particular a container for air transport, having a supporting frame which is made of profiled sections or the like and long sides in the form of polygonal frames resting on a base frame. The polygonal frames comprise vertical reinforcing struts and roof sections and are joined together by transverse sections.
Such freight containers have been used in aircraft for a long time now. Up to now, in aircraft with the fuselage divided into an upper deck and lower deck, the latter is loaded with containers while the former is reserved for passengers. These decks differ somewhat, especially in height. The cross section of the upper deck is usually a semi-circle made up of the floor of the deck and part of the fuselage body. The lower deck is delimited by two parallel, facing surfaces viz., the separation of the decks and a floor built into the fuselage; the sidewalls are likewise formed by the fuselage. Containers have been specially designed to take account of the shape of the outer walls in the lower deck.
There is now an increasing trend to make more economic use of the available space in flights with fewer passengers, e.g., night flights, in that the upper deck is also loaded with freight. However, as the supporting frame of the so-called lower deck container is too weak to allow stacking, this calls for the development of special containers. Also, with the existing containers too much space is lost between them, which represents uneconomic use of the available space.
The lower deck containers have to be secured individually to the floor. However, no provision has been made to allow them to be secured to each other, especially when stacked.
It has also been found to be a disadvantage that when the containers used up to now have been loaded into the fuselage, they are no longer accessible.
It is therefore an object of the invention to develop containers which in spite of being made according to standard can be readily stacked, secured to each other and also when stacked feature facilities which allow access at all times to the freight to be transported. It is a further object of the invention that the container should, of necessity, be of low weight and should be producible both at low cost and in large quantities.